Jeff Korbelik

What makes Penny click is the chemistry among the characters, especially the psychic and the gunslinger, who end up seducing the viewer with their seductive encounters. They make you forget this is an action show

Vicki Hyman

Sonia Saraiya

Penny Dreadful is a surprising show, one that offers both some putrid rotting at the core of London’s soul and a way of going about excavating humanity’s inherent darkness in a different and unexpected way. That is easily worth a penny, and maybe more.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Neil Genzlinger

Staking out a distinctive place within the genre isn’t easy. Penny Dreadful tries to do so with a combination of literary allusion, fine acting, patience and fearlessness, which, at least for the first two episodes, clicks deliciously.

Sara Smith

Tim Molloy

This is, like Alan Moore's “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” a clever exploitation of characters in the public domain. But creator John Logan's story also thrives on its own. Penny Dreadful is a beguiling examination of that space between life and death.

Tim Goodman

Logan, who has written each of the eight episodes, and director J.A. Bayona (who cements the overall look and feel of the series) keep things intriguing and fresh, fearful and entertaining. The characters are so vastly different from one another but mix well.

Maureen Ryan

Mark A. Perigard

There were moments when I wanted to give up on Penny Dreadful. Then there is the ending of the second episode--a horrific jolt that changes everything you thought you knew about one character--and, well, I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Gail Pennington

Robert Bianco

Green and Dalton are incredibly entertaining, their world feels fully created, and in Logan, their show is in the hands of a great writer. It's not quite clear yet where he's leading us, but for awhile, at least, consider following.

Alan Sepinwall

The plot is mostly gibberish.... But the language is wonderful, the performances excellent, and the direction by Bayona so fluid and gorgeous that I found the whole thing a treat even as I quickly lost interest in whatever it is all these people are working together to accomplish.

Jeff Jensen

David Wiegand

Even a TV take on the classic Victorian-era penny dreadful has to work to suspend our disbelief, and Showtime's series does that through solid performances by most of the cast, appropriately lurid special effects and a competent, albeit humorless, script.

Brian Tallerico

Matthew Gilbert

For fans of expertly hammy acting and heated-up supernatural doings, it’s a lot of fun. But if Logan wants to elevate Penny Dreadful from an entertaining and overdone lark to something richer and more thematic, he will need to keep changing things up.... With a bit of clever revisionism and an infusion of our current anxieties into these dated tropes, the show could become something a bit more interesting and dread-filled.

David Hiltbrand

The production and period values are outstanding, as is the cast, especially Timothy Dalton as famed African explorer Sir Malcolm Murray.... As creator John Logan moves away from the horror by the Thames and more toward the internal demons that haunt his protagonists, Penny veers toward the overwritten and overwrought. But by then, you may well be in for a pound.

David Hinckley

Chuck Bowen

Penny Dreadful is too neat, too tasteful and narcotizing, for a work that's full of diseases and serial killers and classist atrocity; not a single monster, lantern, fog cloud, cobblestone, corset or candle is out of place. This kitsch leaves no marks.

Willa Paskin

The results are scattershot. A few of the storylines work beautifully.... But Dorian Gray’s tryst with a tubercular prostitute (Billie Piper) reaches no such heights, delivering the nudity that pay cable customers apparently require, but not much else.

Matt Roush

Atmospheric and overheated, it's often as lurid and messy as American Horror Story and almost as indulgent and incoherent, with characters from Dracula, Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian Gray and assorted other legends of yore intersecting in an occultist brew.

Hank Stuever

Lori Rackl

The series is artfully shot, superbly acted by Eva Green (“Casino Royale”) and boasts an impressive pedigree (producer Sam Mendes of “Skyfall” and “American Beauty”), but it lacks the compelling quality of the pulpy fiction that spawned its pejorative name.